SHERMAN HENSELL, A feisty 86-year-old,
recalls that there was once a move to incorporate Garberville
as a city. "I fought [it like] hell, and I still will!"
he asserts. "We just didn't have the tax base to justify
it."

Raise the question
today with other residents of the southern Humboldt town, and
you'll get pretty much the same answer. Rip Kirby, [photo at left]
for instance, publisher of The Independent, one of the
town's two free newspapers (Life & Times is the other),
says: "It's too expensive to operate a government. We pay
taxes and expect the county to provide services. If we incorporate,
then we've got to have our own police force, fire department
and all that. Garberville has just never had the income to do
that."

Hensell, who moved here with
his wife Amy in 1942, over the years ran a succession of profitable
businesses, from a car repair shop to a furniture store. He still
owns the property on which the Chautauqua Natural Foods store
is located.

He likes to tell you: "When
we moved here there were as many as 29 sawmills in our trading
area, and seven or eight out of Thorn (as he calls Whitethorn,
18 miles up the road from Garberville). But they're all gone,
and now we depend pretty much on the tourists."

That, of course, is the story
up and down the North Coast. The recent closure of the pulp mill
in Ft. Bragg, combined with the opening last month of Big River
State Park south of Mendocino, makes that area's identity as
a tourist destination clearer than ever. Eureka, too, is in the
process of recasting itself, as evidenced by Old Town and the
on-going boardwalk project.

The transformation of Garberville
from little more than a highway stop in a region dominated by
sawmills to a tourist and recreation hub has been underway for
some time and shows no signs of abating. At the same time, the
town is still small and relatively remote, so limited economic
opportunity continues to act as a brake.

`Pot' lucks and nonprofits

Perhaps more than any other
community in the North Coast region, Garberville is influenced
by "the underground economy," as one local puts it.
You don't have to spell it out.

The Independent's Kirby notes that the region celebrated its annual
Hemp Fest on Nov. 10. Garberville, after all, figures as one
of the major players in what is known as the Emerald Triangle
of Trinity, Humboldt and Mendocino counties.

"They used to have a sign
in front of the Branding Iron bar, which said, `Harvest Ball
-- Pot Luck,'" Kirby recalls. "A great deal of money
comes in because of the harvest."

Nobody bothers to hide it. You
can find ads in the local papers, for instance, by Americans
for Safe Access Medical Marijuana Legal Integrity Campaign. A
recent squib in The Independent announced that the Mateel
Community Center in Redway (two miles up the road from Garberville)
was holding its 13 th annual Southern Humboldt Hemp Fest. People
were invited to "shop for hempen holiday gifts and share
a `pot luck' dish."

Janis Tillery, [photo at right] in
her sixth year as executive director of the Garberville-Redway
Area Chamber of Commerce, tells me: "When I first came here
[in 1995], I was surprised that it was unincorporated and tucked
away. The other thing that was even more surprising is that there
are so many nonprofits in southern Humboldt. We're not
really a very wealthy area, and there are fund-raisers all the
time."

Jared Rossman, [photo at left]
a member of the nonprofit Garberville Town Square Committee (more
about this later), says: "Most of the major institutions
that got started here over the last 20 years have been 501C3
nonprofits -- the IRS designation for a tax deductible charitable
organization. Redwoods Rural Health Center, KMUD radio station,
the Mateel Community Center all got started that way."

"Nonprofit" doesn't
necessarily mean everybody's going broke here. Syd Lehman, Chamber
of Commerce president and a prominent real estate operator in
town, notes: "There's a listing right now in Benbow [just
down the hill from Garberville] for a very nice house on the
golf course, and they're asking over a million dollars."
There is, he adds, "a continuing demand" for properties.

Tillery reports that there are
"at least half a dozen new businesses" in Garberville
this year. She says, "We always love to see little businesses
that stay the course."

A woman of lively wit and humor,
as well as a walking compendium of local lore, Tillery remarks:
"I have a friend who says you can do anything you want in
Garberville, and everybody will totally accept you. `The only
thing is, we get to talk about you.' You can reinvent yourself
daily, but expect to be talked about."

She laughs and says, "That's
kind of a nice way to look at your life."

Actually, Garberville almost
lost her. She didn't have a job and didn't know anybody when
she arrived in town, so she thought about settling in Arcata.

"But I had this sort of
cosmic experience in the redwoods," she relates, "so
I wanted to be here. It sounds really goofy, but I think a lot
of people here have something like that happen to them."

Paradise not

Garberville is not without its
problems.

As Tillery tells it: "Even
though we're on Highway 101, it feels even more remote more than
it is, because there's no public transportation -- no taxi cabs,
no buses, no rental cars. You have to have a car or hitchhike.

"This is a remote area
of Humboldt County, remote from Eureka, and we try to develop
a good working relationship with the county commissioners, and
not be whiny about southern Humboldt all the time being a stepchild."

Still, one does hear about the
"country cousins" of SoHum -- as southern Humboldt
is sometimes called.

At one point, Tillery recalls,
there was a proposal for a MAC -- a Municipal Advisory Commission
that would consult with the county supervisors, but it didn't
pass.

"And years before I was
here," she goes on, "there was a proposal to create
another county -- Sequoia County, and that didn't pass. Garberville
and Redway each have a population of about 1,400. That's not
many people to take on a tax burden."

Given that she's a woman with
a cosmic experience, one is not surprised to see a Buddha scroll
on the wall behind her desk.

"That's from a past life,"
she confides. "I lived on a sailboat for almost six years,
and sailed most of the way around the world when I was in my
20s and 30s. I was married then. And I got that [the Buddha image]
in Thailand."

"You sailed around the
world?!" I ask, and she says, "Uh-huh, on a 75-foot
yacht, the Sirocco, that used to belong to Errol Flynn."

One Garberville facility that
got a big lift with the passage of a parcel tax vote last June
was the financially troubled Jerold Phelps Community Hospital.
The first payment comes in January, according to The Independent's
Kirby -- "and once that kicks in, it'll really settle
the problem."

The year's news, however, was
not good for Southern Humboldt Unified School District. Another
parcel tax vote on Nov. 5, came out with a 56 percent approval,
well short of the required two-thirds.

"An unfortunate bit of
timing," notes Kirby. "People were just getting their
tax bills, and they faced a parcel tax for the schools. It was
too much."

It was an obvious disappointment,
said Cliff Anderson, [photo
at left] superintendent of the
school district.

"We were looking at that
as some help in stabilizing our educational programs," Anderson
said. "With the declining enrollment we've faced, we're
having to make year after year reductions in the operating budget.
Stability would have been nice."

Anderson, who was himself a
graduate of South Fork High School in Miranda, started working
for the district in 1980, and has been superintendent since 1993.
The school district, he notes, covers about 745 square miles
-- "equivalent to about half the size of the state of Rhode
Island."

How to cope with the school
parcel tax failure?

"We're going to be looking
at making further reductions, possibly further consolidation
of our school programs, maybe larger class sizes than we were
used to running in the past," Anderson said. "Not quite
as many educational programs as we had, perhaps cutbacks in some
programs at the high school.

"Most of our teachers worked
very, very hard to try to pass Measure A [the school parcel tax],"
he continues. "But they're a strong lot. I don't think we're
going to see a lot of folks wanting to say, `Let's just leave,
because they [the voters] obviously don't care that much about
education.'"

He adds, "We're not going
to give up. We'll be looking at when's the next time we can get
out and put another measure before the electorate. We'll try
to find out what folks might be more receptive to, whether the
amount was too much or the duration of the tax was too long.
We owe it to our kids to keep trying."

On the economic outlook, Anderson
commented: "It's pretty much a service-based economy. When
you look at industries that supported a pretty good proportion
of our community, you're looking at timber and the railroad.
They've gone by the wayside."

Anderson mentions another worry
for the future.

"In recent years,"
he said, "if we look at the census data from the last two
Census Bureau reports, we see that the population in Southern
Humboldt is getting older. The largest population group is 45
years and older. Times have changed."

Coffee and the bed tax

Certainly one business that
seems to be prospering is Redway's Signature Coffee, owned by
Karyn Lee-Thomas, [photo
at right] also known as the JahVa
Mama. Her husband, David, now retired, started the business with
her in 1986 when they moved here from Aptos, where she worked
as a computer consultant.

Lee-Thomas is also a board member
of KMUD radio, which she rates as "probably our most precious
community resource, there for everybody to have a voice."

She is also active in a host
of environmental causes, giving money to Ancient Forests International,
and is a member of the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund
and World Wildlife Fund.

"I support just about every
nonprofit in the area," she said. Every time there's an
event, or a `boogie,' as they call them -- we make coffee for
it. That's pretty much our form of advertising."

Coffee, she notes, is the second-most-traded
commodity in the world, just behind oil.

"We carry coffee from 14
different countries that is organic," she said. "We
were one of the original 13 members in the Organic Coffee Association
of America."

It seems almost sacrilegious,
but she admits drinking tea "mostly every day." She
smiles, then adds, "I drink coffee as a treat, not a habit."

Voicing a peeve I heard from
others as well, she tells me: "We collect more bed tax than
anywhere in the county, and we get very little back."

John Porter, general manager
of Benbow Inn and a board member of the Garberville Chamber of
Commerce, notes that last year the county collected more than
$700,000 in the bed tax from the county's unincorporated areas.

"We pay about $150,000
a year," Porter said. "We collect that from our customers,
but it's a big number.

"Southern Humboldt has
always collected more than 50 percent -- more like in the mid-60s
or low 70s in a percentage basis. So our position to the Board
of Supervisors is that we want more funding; we want to get back
more of that bed tax money.

"The supervisors have been
receptive," Porter says, explaining that when civic leaders
have gone before the board and requested money for the Chamber
of Commerce budget, "they've basically done what we've asked."

A divisive issue

On another hot issue of the
moment in Garberville -- which seems to spark controversies at
the drop of a match -- Porter voiced his support of the Garberville
Town Square project, which would convert a parking area into
a plaza with lawns and benches.

"I think it's a good thing,
a viable concept," Porter said. "Certainly if you look
at that piece of property in terms of what it is now versus what
it could be, I'd say it's a better proposal."

Chamber president Lehman also
comes out flatly in favor of it. He says the two usual objections
raised are that Garberville will lose the parking that the now-vacant
lot affords and that it will attract bums and derelicts, as one
choice phrase has it.

(Not surprisingly, one of the
staunchest opponents is Hensell. "None of the old-timers
like the idea," he told me. "Take all the parking we've
got and fix a place for the hippies to hang out.")

But Lehman notes that even if
the town square doesn't become a reality, "somebody will
build there and the parking will be gone anyway."

He adds, "At least, efforts
can be made to find other parking. I'm for anything that beautifies
the town. And this will do it."

One of the project's most eloquent
voices is that of Jared Rossman, one of the eight volunteer members
of the town square committee.

"I've been here almost
31 years now, pretty much all my adult life. I'm still a `newcomer,'"
he hastens to add, smiling. "You know, as far as the old
guard here."

Now 53, Rossman lives in Briceland
-- "a wide spot in the road" eight miles from Garberville,
towards Shelter Cove.

"I've lived all around
this area, but I've always used Garberville as town -- the laundromat,
the only movie theater in 50 miles, the gas station, the grocery
store, and of course all the cultural events," he says.

"So I'm interested in making
it as nice a place to live as it can be. When I was first here,
in 1972, Garberville was just another highway to town. People
stopped off here for gas, and then headed back up Highway 101.
There were bars, gas stations, and not much else. But it is getting
nicer.

"The Soroptimists planted
trees along the main drag [Redwood Drive]. And there was a big
controversy. A lot of the merchants and old guard didn't want
anybody messing with things. But now everybody in town thinks
the trees are a major improvement, and they are."

It's much the same for the proposed
town square, he says.

"When we started there
was a vacant lot in town, the last vacant lot, and it looked
like it was going to go commercial and become another mini-mall
or a two-story office building.

"It's basically been an
illicit parking lot for as long as I can remember, always a rutted
and pot-holed place. The community's been using it as a parking
lot, but it's always been at the grace of the owner. So when
it came up for sale a year and a half ago, we realized this is
the last chance to keep this as an open place in Garberville
for the whole community. So we jumped on it."

With a laugh, he adds, "Little
did we know what we were getting into."

A town without a center

The "we" is the committee
of eight core members. "We are all volunteers," Rossman
emphasizes. "Nobody's making a dime. We've raised all the
money through dances, benefits [and telephone solicitations].
It's been amazing, a lot of support."

The committee has been working
for only 14 months, and it has raised "close to $170,000,
just in contributions from individuals, businesses, and organizations
locally."

[Artist's conception
of the Garberville Town Square Project.]

From the town of Piercy on the
south to Weott on the north, Rossman figures about 10,000 people
use Garberville as "town." He adds, "but there's
no common place where they can gather for small events [the Rodeo
Queen, he throws in, was crowned in the middle of the street],
no public bathroom, no public drinking fountain, no bike rack
-- basic human services.

"We're the gateway to the
redwoods. How many tens of thousands of tourists come by Garberville
and stop in? If we had a town square, a major cultural amenity
added to the area Democracy is built around town squares in the
United States, and we don't have one here."

Rossman also notes that committee
members talked about the project with Sgt. Mike Downey, the officer
in charge of the Sheriff's substation in Garberville.

"I said, `You know, we
think if we make this place nice, it will attract nice people.'"

As Rossman relates, the sergeant
replied: "This is a basic tenet of law enforcement. It's
called `the broken window effect.' If you make a place nice,
it will attract nice people. If you leave it funky, people treat
it funky, and they abuse it and litter it." According to
Rossman, the sergeant also suggested keeping the design low profile,
so there wouldn't be big things to hide behind, so the committee
is talking about benches, planters, maybe a small stage area.

"The fact is that Garberville
is getting fancier -- I don't know whether you want to call it
gentrification or yuppification -- it's happening in spite of
us," Rossman says. "It's happening because they've
improved the highway from the Bay Area, so more people come up
here in terms of visiting or for second homes. We think Garberville
has the potential of becoming a chic, charming town."

The Town Square Committee still
owes about $50,000 on the purchase price. The property is owned
by another local non-profit called the Iron Mountain Institute.

"And it has agreed to umbrella
us," Rossman says. "We're about halfway through our
paperwork to get our own nonprofit status. Then we will be the
Garberville Town Square, Inc., a nonprofit, charitable organization.
We're hoping to set it up with a local board of directors, and
raising the money to cover the ongoing costs for utilities, maintenance
and a caretaker. We're thinking that we can get the ongoing costs
down to about $20,000 a year. And we're thinking we'll be able
to raise that with a couple of benefits."

Change is hard

Rossman has spent about a month
walking around town measuring the size of streets and widths
of parking spaces, and he found that the current parking is under-utilized,
and more parking can be created in the town.

"We're trying to promulgate
through the county a Garberville Parking Authority that has some
clout."

He figures it will be a couple
of years before there's a grand opening, but the committee is
hoping that next summer they can do some of the underground work
-- water, sewer and electric lines.

"You know," Rossman
muses, "change is hard, especially change that isn't your
own idea. Some of the old guard is having a little trouble because
they didn't think of it. They should have. They resisted the
Soroptimists planting those trees, and now they are a significant
element in the beautification of this community."

As Rossman sees it, this town
square will be "a feather in the cap" for Garberville.

"Some people think, `Oh,
this is too expensive.' In five years, it's going to look like
a steal, the way property values are going up in Northern California."